Russell Brand on Revolution

[Pickman's model]

Oh, do fuck off and do something useful with your life.

just fuck off and carry on with your useless life elsewhere

 

[ibilly99]

and ain't this the trewth...

 

[butchersapron]

... what's the word - incorporating everything into itself as a conduit of profit, I see it as a neutralisation of any potential message - asda wouldn't stock it if it was really incendiary, so it must not be in order to get on their shelves, and once you've compromised the message (not sure RB has needed to, as his views might well be liberal enough not to be of concern anyway, I haven't read the book, not interested) then you've lost it really. I just don't see part of a strategy of the destruction of capitalism being borne from tactics that push consumerism, since I would see consumerism ending with capitalism, and the internet is a far, far better way of disseminating information than books anyway.

Recuperation - but doesn't always have to take place on level of profit, as you go on to note, the symbolic effects of recuperation are just as important.

 

[Greebo]

that article is worse than one of jean luc's posts

I struggle to believe that's possible.

 

[Greebo]

Oh, do fuck off and do something useful with your life.

Likewise, sweetie. I recommend that you spend less time on threads like this and more time on the threads which stop people falling through the cracks and provide ways of getting people back out. Then you can tell VP to "do something useful".

 

[Jean-Luc]

I'm not sure that the mere fact of being sold in supermarkets is a sign of recuperation or harmlessness. I think I once saw The Communist Manifesto on sale in one (presumably for students of politics at a nearby university to buy). They are just interested in selling anything that they think people will buy and which will bring them a profit. As Marx once pointed out, capitalists don't care whether they are selling bibles or brandy as long as it expands their capital.

 

[butchersapron]

I'm not sure that the mere fact of being sold in supermarkets is a sign of recuperation or harmlessness. I think I once saw The Communist Manifesto on sale in one (presumably for students of politics at a nearby university to buy). They are just interested in selling anything that they think people will buy and which will bring them a profit. As Marx once pointed out, capitalists don't care whether they are selling bibles or brandy as long as it expands their capital.

And being sold in asda doesn't itself make a product revolutionary or challenging of the established capitalist social relations.To do that it has to offer a bit more than this book. I.e no one is saying being sold or not sold in asda is what actually counts. Again you miss the point being made.

Anyway, the brandlerites now have Brand as Marx and Paine combined. I think this is a good example of how celeb culture works isn't it?

 

[butchersapron]

Your facts are skewed.
The point being, while America and France enthusiastically embraced Paine's revolution against the monarchy, Britain remained loyal to their monarch, and still does to this day.

Talk about being behind the times!

You really don't know much about british history - radical or otherwise.

History will only tell if Brand matches up to Paine, whose achievements were nothing less than extraordinary (with the notable exception of England where he failed to mount a revolution against the monarchy). In the meantime, some comparisons between Paine and Brand are accurate in that both have called for "Revolution," both express ideas in the popular vernacular, both use irreverent humor, both use a medium accessible to all (Paine used pamphlets, Brand uses the Internet), both are reviled for speaking truth to power. If you read the dirt leveled against Thomas Paine the similarities are remarkable. "He's a drunk, he doesn't wash, he stinks, he's uneducated." And most notable of all -- "he fucked a cat..." (I kid you not, they said it about Paine and they say the exact same thing about Brand).

Note the bolded he.

 

[chilango]

Not surprised to see Brand on sale in Asda.

You used to be able to pick up copies of Socialist Studies at the Happy Shopper around the corner from me.



(Obviously not. But I did used to see Class War on sale in newsagents and corner shops in the early 90s)

 

[brogdale]

You doubters make me fucking sick...

 

[butchersapron]

Note the demand that

a) rump ireland be brought back into the UK - presumably by force
or
b) The orange state be bolstered and bordered from rump ireland

Nasty stuff.

 

[brogdale]

Note the demand that

a) rump ireland be brought back into the UK - presumably by force
or
b) The orange state be bolstered and bordered from rump ireland

Nasty stuff.

Russell Brand wearing an Anarchy in the UK t-shirt as he heads to his car, after having a late lunch at Gjelina Restaurant along Abbott Kinney Boulevard in Venice, CA, with a group of friends.

 

[J Ed]

lol, that was BNP policy a few years back... maybe still is but no one cares

 

[Jean-Luc]

Note the demand that

a) rump ireland be brought back into the UK - presumably by force
or
b) The orange state be bolstered and bordered from rump ireland

Nasty stuff.

Don't be silly. It's only a t-shirt.

 

[Jean-Luc]

Anyway, the brandlerites now have Brand as Marx and Paine combined.

For those who don't get the (rather feeble) pun:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Brandler

I think the term you are looking for is Brandism.

 

[butchersapron]

Or branderovci.

 

[rekil]

I thought it was a Bandera reference cos of the sort of characters he gravitates towards.

 

[rekil]

I am busy eating organic yoghurt btw. Little bit morning activism.

 

[butchersapron]

I thought it was a Bandera reference cos of the sort of characters he gravitates towards.

You must have been reading my mind.

 

[Jean-Luc]

I thought it was a Bandera reference cos of the sort of characters he gravitates towards.

If that's a reference to the Bandera I'm thinking off (the Ukrainian nationalist fascist), that's another over-the-top criticism. But, I agree, I doubt it was a reference to bandiera rosa. Butchers is not that generous.

 

[treelover]

Likewise, sweetie. I recommend that you spend less time on threads like this and more time on the threads which stop people falling through the cracks and provide ways of getting people back out. Then you can tell VP to "do something useful".

Its only a few people on here who do that.

 

[Pickman's model]

You doubters make me fucking sick...

sorry to see his uk seems to include the 26 cos

 

[butchersapron]

Its only a few people on here who do that.

Apart from no one saying the mass of people do that (and i think the mass of posters do so when they can and have the knowledge and experience to do so) you have no idea what goes in on in private or behind the scenes here - never mind the threads that you don't read or only half read. Which makes that a pretty pointless and spiteful jibe.

 

[treelover]

For those who don't get the (rather feeble) pun:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Brandler

I think the term you are looking for is Brandism.

I would like to know why brand is being compared to Brandler, who risked everything, something Brand has not done yet or will, or is it just the similar names.

 

[ddraig]

Its only a few people on here who do that.

How the fuck would you know and what do you do? Ffs
E2a - if you are implying more should then please do dispense your pearls in how we should be doing it

 

[ViolentPanda]

Your facts are skewed.



1. Paine was working class if "working class" means working for a living, as opposed to the privileged upper classes.

"Working class" doesn't mean "working for a living", it's about distance from ownership of the means of production. Paine's father was a skilled artisan with his own business who could afford his son to be educated at a good school. Paine was middle-class.

2. Paine's life in England was marked by repeated failures. He was fired from his job as a an excise tax man, took over his wife's business, went bankrupt, almost ended up in debtors prison.

He was fired, and then re-hired after petitioning his employers. He almost ended up in debtors prison because he had several thousand copies of a pamphlet printed, and then couldn't sell them, not because his life was riven with financial ineptitude.

3. He couldn't afford his own housing, lived with friends and with his wife's family. Why do you think he wrote "The Case of the Officers of Excise" to petition for a pay raise? (the petition ultimately brought him to the attention of Benjamin Franklin, who invited him to come to America and became his benefactor).
4. He had a marginal education, went to Quaker schools until he was 13, couldn't advance beyond that because Quakers where not permitted higher education.

He finished his education at Thetford Grammar school, which wasn't a "Quaker school", it was a local public school in the proper sense of the word. The maximum leaving age from most schools (except a handful of schools such as Eton and Harrow that fed pupils to universities) was 14 for all. It didn't shift to 15 until the late 19th century, to 16 in the mid-20th century, and 18 in the first decade of the 21st century.

Wrong.

He didn't begin to write "Common Sense" until late 1775 (published in January 1776), a year after he arrived from England. He wrote it on the urging of Dr. Benjamin Rush, after he came to Rush's attention, when as editor of the Philadelphia Magazine Paine wrote his scathing condemnation of the slave trade, called "African Slavery in America." This brought him into the inner circle of revolutionaries (Samuel and John Adams, among them) who were abolitionists and had pressed for independence. The idea of independence failed to gain traction against the loyalists in the Continental Congress until Paine's pamphlet opened public debate and forced the issue upon them.

"Common Sense" was the result of re-editing a fair amount of prose he'd already written prior to sailing to America. One of his British contemporaries, William Cobbett, remarked on "Common Sense" containing material that had been previously published. Cobbett wasn't pro-revolution himself, but he did read fairly widely to keep himself informed.

Wrong again.

He was most definitely run off by a mob (after his indictment for treason). They chased him all the way to the docks, where he escaped across the channel. Upon his arrival in France he was greeted by cheering crowds and met by the Mayor of Paris.

In folklore this happened, in reality we know that a bunch of "Church and King" militants (the political descendants of the same idiots who razed Joseph Priestley's house and laboratory to the ground) were set on him. They weren't a "mob", they were paid provocateurs, just as they were in the succeeding decades whenever ideas about democracy came up.

The point being, while America and France enthusiastically embraced Paine's revolution against the monarchy, Britain remained loyal to their monarch, and still does to this day.

Talk about being behind the times!

Talk about you having such a shallow knowledge of what you're discoursing on that you're making yourself look foolish!
A few points:
France's monarchy was absolutist (simplistically defined: power over life and death, political power confined to a small monarchic and aristocratic clique, a very harsh tax regime).
The United Kingdom's monarchy was and is constitutional (simplistically defined: no tax-raising powers, no powers over Parliament, little power that could be exerted over the legal process, except the power that any member of an elite network, King or President, has)
Loyalty to the monarch is loyalty to an office of the "head of state", not to a person or a form of governance that anyway doesn't exist.
Paine's writings were "enthusiastically embraced" by a significant minority of people across the class spectrum in the UK. "Samizdat" versions of his writings circulated for decades before they were officially published here post-"Great Reform" and the partial dismantling of the legal processes that allowed anything vaguely politically-questionable to be classed as "sedition".

History will only tell if Brand matches up to Paine, whose achievements were nothing less than extraordinary (with the notable exception of England where he failed to mount a revolution against the monarchy). In the meantime, some comparisons between Paine and Brand are accurate in that both have called for "Revolution," both express ideas in the popular vernacular, both use irreverent humor, both use a medium accessible to all (Paine used pamphlets, Brand uses the Internet), both are reviled for speaking truth to power. If you read the dirt leveled against Thomas Paine the similarities are remarkable. "He's a drunk, he doesn't wash, he stinks, he's uneducated." And most notable of all -- "he fucked a cat..." (I kid you not, they said it about Paine and they say the exact same thing about Brand).

Paine elucidated some very sound reasons for revolution against the monarchy, and some processes to start the ball rolling. Brand has elucidated some reasons for social revolution against capitalism, but has elucidated very little in the way of process. I'd prefer that he did elucidate processes. It's not enough to just vaguely point in a direction and say "oh, that was good, lets do something like that, but with no violence, mmkay?".

 

[ViolentPanda]

vanguardism at it's grimmest.



fucking scum, I think the elitist mainstream parties are not as much of an issue as the elitism displayed in this paragraph particularly.

On the amusing side of the crapness of that article is what the author says about how great it is that revolution is stocked in asda, when I see that as an outcropping of the phenomena of capitalism - what's the word - incorporating...

Recuperating?

everything into itself as a conduit of profit, I see it as a neutralisation of any potential message - asda wouldn't stock it if it was really incendiary, so it must not be in order to get on their shelves, and once you've compromised the message (not sure RB has needed to, as his views might well be liberal enough not to be of concern anyway, I haven't read the book, not interested) then you've lost it really. I just don't see part of a strategy of the destruction of capitalism being borne from tactics that push consumerism, since I would see consumerism ending with capitalism, and the internet is a far, far better way of disseminating information than books anyway.

 

[killer b]

Its only a few people on here who do that.

this just isn't true. Only someone with little knowledge of or engagement with the community here could think that.

Oh.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Recuperation - but doesn't always have to take place on level of profit, as you go on to note, the symbolic effects of recuperation are just as important.

Damn you, you got there 4 hours before me!

 

[ViolentPanda]

I am busy eating organic yoghurt btw. Little bit morning activism.

Eating it is acceptable.

Weaving it into sandals, however, usually means that truncheons get drawn.